


Blue-Winged Magpie

by ryoken



Series: a celebration for witches [1]
Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 16:56:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13104522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryoken/pseuds/ryoken
Summary: AKT 1 - ROSALIN FAMILIER DE PRINTEMPSkozue recalls a scene.





	Blue-Winged Magpie

**Author's Note:**

> "would kids do that" i ask "do kids act that way?"
> 
> but of course, that's a stupid question to ask. the point of this series is to be based around moments in my life, from childhood to adolescence, but changed and morphed and sewn and fixed to fit the witches of ohtori. the way i acted as a kid wasn't normal, the way i thought wasn't normal, the way i spoke wasn't normal. but children are never normal, you know? 
> 
> warning for a small bit of animal death, or, ehh... cracking open an egg?

When they were kids, Kozue and Miki had a little playground in their backyard. Kozue remembers it exactly. A set of swings, beside a sort of tree fort with a climbing wall, ladder, and a slide. In winter, the snow they had to take out the slide and ladder, so they would climb up the rock wall. Jumping off the other side into the soft snow. It was… pleasant, the days remembered playing on it both cherished and useless. Their parents had sold it to a family friend after they turned 10, as they were far too old for such childish things anymore. Kozue still wanted to use that old swing set, sometimes, though the seats on it were made of wood and hurt to sit on after a while. But the memories of it will have to do.

 

She remembers, one day, in spring, they found a new bird’s nest up in the corner of their fort. Oh, how perfect it looked. The mother wasn’t home when they found it, so they had a clear view of the two eggs nestled together in the nest. Miki had known, at the time, that most common birds like the one who made this nest don’t only lay two eggs. It was more likely the other eggs had been stolen by predators already, or knocked out of the small nest during a windy storm. He read nature encyclopedias, sometimes. Kozue didn’t. The eggs could fit easily in the palms of their small hands, white speckled blue, though neither of them knew what species of bird it belonged to. Kozue had thought it was cool to see a bird’s nest up close. Miki was excited, and disappointed.

 

“I don’t think we’ll be able to play up here if there’s birds living here… what if it’s parents attack us?” Miki had said to her.

 

“Well, we still have the swings,” Kozue replied. She did like the swings better, she had thought even back then. It wouldn’t be too bad to not be able to use the slide. Maybe she’d even get to sneak a look at the baby birds one day.

 

“I guess,” Miki said in response, though obviously let down by it. He turned, staring at the ground below them.

 

Kozue hummed, still staring at the eggs. She felt curious. There was a baby chick in each of them, after all, right in front of them, even if she couldn’t actually see it. Maybe if she was gentle enough, she thought. Reaching out with her hand, she picked up one of the eggs as gently as she could. Miki gasped beside her, almost startling her into dropping it.

 

“The mother won’t recognize it anymore if you touch it!” Miki hurriedly whispered, as if he was worried the egg would overhear, “It’s – it’s – if you touch it, it has your scent. And the mom won’t know it’s her kid if it smells like human.”

 

“That’s stupid,” Kozue told him, “Wait, is that true?”

 

“I… I think so?” She learned, years later, it was not.

 

“Oh…” Kozue said simply, looking down sadly at the egg. She hadn’t planned on taking it away from it’s family forever, she only wanted to hold it in her hands for a moment.

 

“What if it gets lonely, now that it’s the only one,” Miki said, looking over at the remaining egg in the nest. _What if it gets lonely?_ She thought, _now that no one wants to touch it ‘cause it’s smells like her._

 

“Uhm… well… we could always look inside this egg?” Kozue tried. She wanted to cheer her brother up, not understanding his distress over the eggs.

 

“Isn’t that bad?” Miki asked worriedly.

 

“Well… uh, if it isn’t going to be born, it’ll just look like the eggs we eat, right? And if there’s a baby in there we can… raise it?” Kozue tripped over her words as she explained, but felt more comfortable with the idea as she said it.

 

“Dad won’t let us keep a bird,” Miki pointed out miserably.

 

“We’ll raise it out here,” Kozue told him, “We’ll figure out what species it is and what it eats… I mean, birds eat worms, don’t they? Those won’t be hard to find outside, c’mon.”

 

Miki sniffed, “Okay…” and followed Kozue down the fort’s slide. Kozue held the egg as carefully as a child could manage, and led them over to the pavement where the driveway started.

 

“What do you want to name it, when it hatches?” Kozue asked.

 

“Uhm… depends on if it’s a boy or a girl,” Miki said.

 

“I guess,” Kozue looked down at the egg. Was it a boy or a girl? It’s theirs, is that not good enough? Is there anyway to even check with birds?

 

They sat down on the line separating the grass and the concrete, and Kozue let out a big breath. Miki sat beside her. He had calmed down, and now looked genuinely interested in what they would find inside the egg. Kozue had felt like she had finally done something right to cheer him up. She could do this for him, and they’d have a perfect little pet bird.

 

She cupped the egg in one hand, holding it close to the ground.

 

“Alright,” Kozue said finally, bringing the egg down in one quick motion and cracking it onto the driveway.

 

It opened up as Kozue stuck her thumb in the crack she had made, like she had seen her mother do in the kitchen a hundred times before. Out poured a pale looking blob, landing on the concrete, in front of the twins’ eyes.

 

“Oh… oh,” Kozue said, looking down on it. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Inside the clear liquid was the fetus of a bird, barely developed and covered in veins. She couldn’t stop looking at it. The beak was larger than the rest of it’s underdeveloped body, and the area where the eyes were looked like they were popping out of it’s skull. Kozue had never put the thought into what a bird fetus would look like, but here it was, in front of her eyes by her own doing. She could only think two things. _Is it alive, was it suffering? Is it… dead? It’s dead, right?_

 

Kozue only turned away when she heard a higher pitched noise beside her. Miki sat there, disgusted, staring down at the embryo and looking pained.

 

“So that’s what, it looks like,” Miki’s voice wasn’t strong at all. Kozue didn’t know what he was actually trying to say.

 

“Sorry, I’m really sorry,” She tried telling him, panicking, “I didn’t… know. Um. Um, it probably died really fast after we opened it, so I don’t think it’s in pain or anything.”

 

It didn’t make anything better. Miki stood there as tears began to form in his eyes, letting out gasping noises and looking like he was about to have a breakdown. Obviously, what Kozue said didn’t help him.

 

Kozue knew why, of course. They had just killed a living being, or a being that was going to live, or… whatever. That was a bad thing to do, and of course she felt guilty over it. It was sad when things died, and it was worse thing to be the cause of it. But the strange thing about it, as she watched her brother cry, Kozue didn’t find herself crying at all. No matter how sad she should be an animal was dead, she simply wasn’t. She felt bad of course, but not one ounce tearful about it, not like Miki was beside her. That’s a flaw, isn’t it?

 

“We killed it,” Miki said, “I didn’t wanna kill it.” _We_ killed it? Kozue said to herself, and surprised herself by also thinking, _you_ didn’t want to kill it? _Did I, then?_

 

“I killed it,” She told him, “I’ll… uhm… I’ll go tell mom, so.” Kozue stood up, quickly getting away from the situation in front of them, rushing to the front door. Or did she walk? Maybe the memory doesn’t matter that much.

 

It did not go over well, but that didn’t matter, obviously. The rest isn’t so memorable. Every conversation with your parents blurs together over time, all the things they say to you, all the things they do to you. Kozue doesn’t recall it, though it had to have happened. The only thing left in her memories was the playground, the bird, and Miki.

 

Sometime afterward (it had to be) she had gone back outside again (because it is the only other part clear in her mind) and looked for Miki. Their parents had not wanted to see the embryo, to just let their strange children bury it in the dirt. Just get rid of it, she was told.

 

It took only a moment for Kozue to pinpoint where Miki was, catching sight of his hair in the window of their parent’s car, in the middle of the driveway. She approached it. He sat inside, curled up in the backseat, crying.

 

Kozue didn’t know what she wanted to say to him. Or if she wanted to try to get him out of the car. She definitely didn’t want to go in there with him. It wasn’t like there was nothing she could say, yet she still found herself not saying anything. Too much to process and think about as such a young kid, and given up on trying to say she didn’t mean to do something bad, leaving her speech dead. She had wanted to open the egg all by herself, after all, so Miki could see it. So Miki could know. Instead of trying to speak, she had stood in the shadow of the car, and stared at her brother.


End file.
